


What Friends Are For

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-07-28
Updated: 2001-07-28
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:19:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I woke up this morning and this was already eighty percent formed in my head. God I love dreaming. Setting: Stoke Me A Clipper, obviously. Pairing: Lister/Ace, and it may or may not be the 'original' Ace; I leave that up to the readers' imaginations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Friends Are For

**Author's Note:**

> Red Dwarf characters belong to Grant Naylor.

'I'm not sure I can go through with it. _Leave_ I mean. _Be_ Ace.' Rimmer definitely doesn't look too certain about it.

Lister looks at him with an expression of mingled amusement and exasperation on his face. 'You heard what he said; it's your destiny.'

'It's my destiny to be a smug, self-satisfied git?' Rimmer asks.

Lister looks over the edge of the gantry they're standing on, suddenly wishing he could just push Rimmer off it. Or jump himself. Rimmer isn't making this any easier on him. He wants to grab the man and yell in his face, 'I don't want you to go, you smeghead, and you're not helping me by being so damn wishy-washy!'.

But he doesn't. He just tells Rimmer that they're going to follow the coffin, that Ace suggested it if Rimmer got cold feet, and that he can be a different kind of Ace. A nice one. One that isn't so full of himself.

Rimmer nods, vaguely.

'We're gonna have the funeral thingy in a little while,' Lister adds.

'A _funeral_? But... but... oh, I see, you're going to act as if it's me in that coffin.' Rimmer's stomach squirms at this, and he can't help wondering if he's going to be asked to do his own eulogy.

'Krytes was going to do the eulogy and everything,' Lister says. 'All you gotta do is sit back, relax... oh, and one thing, where's, um, Rachel?'

* * *

When Kryten calls Lister up to the podium to make a speech, Lister, though surprised, stands and goes. As he walks up there he realises that he probably _is_ the one most suited to say something about the 'finer' side of Rimmer's nature. Furthermore, he realises that there actually _is_ something he can say.

As he makes his impromptu speech, he finds himself realising that everything nice he is saying about the supercilious, superficial, super-stupid hologram is actually true. Rimmer _was_ the most dedicated technician on board Red Dwarf, even if it never got him anywhere. And he definitely managed to keep Lister sane. Oh yeah. Even if he drove him completely mad in the process. And especially considering that the alternative would have been living with the Cat for all eternity.

And he has to blink, hard, to keep the tears from streaming down his cheeks.

One escapes when he and Kryten are placing _First Officer_ Rimmer's pips and insignia into the coffin. It rolls down his cheek and off his chin, nosediving into the coffin, to remain there for all eternity.

If anyone sees it, they don't comment.

* * *

A colossal gas giant hangs serenely in space, slowly turning on its axis. It is orbited by millions upon millions of small yellow coffins, each one containing the mortal remains of Arnold J. Rimmer -- known to his friends as Ace. It is an awe-inspiring sight, and for the Dwarfers, who have been concentrating on 'their' coffin and don't realise the others are there until Lister blinks and sees them - like suddenly having a 3-D picture leap out of the page at him - it is nothing short of terrifying.

'All those Rimmers...' the new Ace mutters in a stricken voice.

'They all did it. They all became Ace, and passed on the flame. Are you really gonna be the one to break the chain?' Lister's voice holds a note of questioning, a note of disbelief -- will Rimmer's perpetual cowardice extend to this as well? -- and, buried under the rest of his nonchalant question, a note of pleading.

Ace buries his face in his hands. 'I don't know Listy, I just don't know.' He shakes his head, blond strands waving softly. 'I can't even get the hang of the voice.' Unbeknownst to him, however, he actually says this in the real Ace voice.

Lister gets up and looks at him. 'Come on then,' he says.

'Come where?'

'Down to A.R. If you think you need more time, then I'll help you train. Helping out, it's what friends are for, after all.'

Ace snorts. 'Listy, you're not Ace. You can't help me.'

'I know what he's like.' Lister bounces on his toes. 'Come on, let's go. Kryten and Cat's shift is about to start anyway.'

Just as he says this, the mechanoid and the feline enter the cockpit.

'Takin' my name in vain, Bud?' the Cat asks.

'The only vain thing in here is you, Cat,' Lister retorts, grinning.

'I'm not vain!'

'With respect, sir, you spent all of our last shift trying to adjust the rear-vision mirror so that you could see yourself from your seat,' Kryten points out.

The Cat declines to answer, slides into his place, and is completely oblivious to the fact that Lister and Ace have already walked out.

* * *

The A.R. landscape is almost completely bare. A grassy field stretches to the horizon in either direction. The only thing breaking the monotony is the two combatants in the middle of it.

They circle each other, trading parries and ripostes, fencing inexpertly but with a will, and an observer might wonder if this is some past animosity airing itself in combat.

For a full hour they battle, exiting and resetting the game more than once, until both of them are almost dropping with fatigue and completely exhausted.

* * *

'And what was that supposed to prove?' Ace demands.

Lister heels off his boots and throws them into a corner of the sleeping quarters. 'Listen to yourself, Ace,' he says without rancour. 'You've got the voice down. Look at yourself in the mirror and toss your head. You can flick your hair like him and everything.'

Ace scrutinises his appearance in the mirror. 'How did you do that?' he asks.

'You think your hair's not going to get in the way when you're fencing?' Lister asks. He consults his watch. 'You've had it right for, oh, about half an hour now, and the voice for forty-five minutes.'

'Really?'

'Well, except then.' Rimmer's voice had crept through again.

'Sorry,' Ace says.

'Is there anything else you can think of, Ace?' Lister asks.

'Well, he _is_ a prodigious lover, apparently,' Ace muses.

'Uh... don't know that I can help you there, Ace,' Lister says, stuttering a little.

Ace reaches out and touches him on the cheek. 'I wouldn't be so sure,' he says.

'What? You _want_ to -- um - make love to me?'

Ace drops his hand, lowers his head, and takes a step backwards. 'Forget it. It was just a sort of random thought. I've never done it with a man before,' he mumbles.

'Ace, you've only done it with one _woman_ before. Actually, that could explain a lot.'

'Are you saying I'm gay?'

Lister shakes his head, sees the miserable look on Ace's face, and hugs him. 'No, don't be so silly. I mean, we all get the urge to experiment once in a while...' Where are these words coming from? 'It's Okay, don't get upset.'

Ace looks down at him, tears forming in his bright brown eyes. 'I'm sorry Listy,' he whispers. In his old voice.

And it's those three words that make something break.

Lister feels his stomach drop down to the level of his kneecaps, then bound back up to knock on his Adam's apple. He recognises this feeling. It's one he used to get when he saw Kris Kochanski, Lise Yates, any of his old girlfriends really.

'Don't be sorry,' Lister says.

Then, when Ace meets his gaze, he kisses him.

* * *

They claw at one another's clothing, in a wild tangle of hands and arms and Lister's shirt and Ace's silvery flying suit. Feverish kisses are stolen, mouths meeting mouths or cheeks or necks. Lister remembers the tube of lube he hid ages ago under his pillow and digs it out. Ace steals it from him.

'Bend over.' It's definitely a direct order. Lister raises an eyebrow at him, and Ace pushes him towards the bed. Lister kneels on their discarded clothing, leaning over the bunk, and clenches his fists.

When Ace is prepared a minute later, he hesitates for the first time since their first kiss. 'Listy, are you sure you want to do this?'

Lister turns his head, looks up at him. When his answer comes out it's in a growl. 'Just fuck me, you stupid superhero.'

Ace moves forward and in what seems like seconds is on him and in him. Lister gasps with the -- pain? Unexpectedness? -- of it, and his muscles involuntarily tighten around Ace's cock. But, he realises, he must've been ready for him, or it would never have happened so fast.

'Oh God.' They both say it, and again as Ace gets used to the feeling of being inside his longtime bunkmate and begins to move. Then words turn to soft moans.

Lister doesn't expect that Ace will last long. For one thing, this is only the second time he's ever had sex. But as Ace steadily thrusts into him, he's beginning to wonder if he's going to last long either.

The head of Ace's cock just nudges his prostate, and it's like a bomb going off down there. Lister yelps, bucks back against his lover, and in response Ace pushes him hard against the bunk and tries for even more depth. They just have to hope, at this point, that Kryten isn't hearing any of their cries.

Lister manages to snake a hand between his own legs and grip his own cock, hoping desperately for some release of the power being built up inside him. Although it feels at the moment as if any such release now will have the same effect on _Starbug_ as a couple of bombs many millennia ago had on two towns called Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It has that effect on Ace, at least.

Lister touching himself, Ace realises, is a powerful visual turn-on, and he yearns to do something more than just watch. Carefully, without missing a movement, he slides his own hand round to cover Lister's, and the gasp that comes from deep inside Lister's throat is enough. Without any sort of warning, they're both no longer at the edge, but jumping off it without a hang glider.

Lister's orgasm has the effect of tightening his muscles again around Ace's cock, and this only brings Ace's own climax on even faster. They cry out in unison; each other's names, formless words, sounds of pleasure intermingled with emotional pain.

Ace slowly pulls out, low hums of pleasure running along tortured nerves, and sighs.

'Oh God...' Lister collapses onto the floor, landing in the pool of his own semen, and isn't even revolted enough to get up. He can feel a slow trickling sensation inside himself, and hopes that it isn't blood as well as... anything else. 'Oh God...'

'No, _Ace_, not _God_.' Ace is laughing at him. 'I'm going for a shower. Care to join me? I need someone to wash my back.'

Lister does. After all, that's what friends are for.

* * *

When he has his infamous dream, about a month later, and awakens disgusted, it's because the memory is too much. The pain of distance, of knowing that he will never see his lover again, strikes a chord deep in the Scouser's heart. After Kochanski and Kryten both leave him alone in the medi-bay, he lays his head down on a pillow and cries for hours.

And wishes luck to his friend, wherever he is.


End file.
